WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats spent billions of dollars warning American voters that Donald Trump posed an imminent threat to democracy, that his economic policies would only benefit his wealthy friends and that he was literally a fascist.
In the end, voters didn’t care — and if they did, it didn’t matter.
And now, after Kamala Harris’s decisive loss, Democrats are entering a second Trump presidency with no clear leader, no clear plan, and no agreement on why they were wrong about the 2024 election.
“I think there needs to be a house cleaning, a new generation of leadership needs to emerge,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., one of the few Democrats with presidential ambitions to bring up the party’s future. Wednesday. “New thinking, new ideas and new direction are needed. And you know, the establishment has created a disaster.”
With votes still being counted, Trump was on track to become the first Republican in two decades to win the popular vote, although the magnitude of his Electoral College victory would likely be no greater than President Barack Obama’s in 2008 , in which he won 365 electoral votes. .
Trump picked up a small but significant share of younger voters, black voters and Hispanic voters, many of whom felt down about the economy, according to AP VoteCast, a comprehensive survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide. The Republican president-elect also made progress among voters without a college degree.
Most of the elected Democrats most frequently mentioned as 2028 presidential candidates — including the governors of California, Illinois, Michigan and Pennsylvania — declined to offer their opinions when asked. Others canceled scheduled interviews.
The few progressives willing to speak publicly offered several explanations. Relatively few blamed President Joe Biden for going back on his promise not to run for reelection, which prevented the party from choosing a replacement in a traditional primary.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent and former Democratic primary candidate from Vermont, had warned Harris before Election Day that she was focusing too much on flipping Republican votes and not enough on pocketbook issues. He issued a statement criticizing the party leadership.
“It shouldn’t be a huge surprise that a Democratic Party that has failed the working class finds that the working class has failed them,” he said. “First it was the white working class, and now it’s also Latino and black workers. While Democratic leaders defend the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they are right.”
Others were not so keen on large-scale changes.
“Our challenge is not to overreact to this election,” said Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., who easily won reelection Tuesday night. “We had a candidate with a relatively low profile — no one knew much about Kamala Harris … hiring one of the most famous people in human history.”
Just eight years ago, Democrats were stunned by Trump’s shocking victory over Hillary Clinton. But at the time, many unanimously agreed that the loss was due to dysfunction within the Democratic National Committee. Others blamed Russian influence efforts in support of Trump or FBI Director James Comey’s statement denouncing Clinton’s handling of classified information in her emails while she served as secretary of state.
This time there are no excuses. The results show that Democrats’ current problems extend far beyond their political machinery.
Aides from the party’s progressive wing condemned Harris’ campaign for investing too much time and resources in winning over moderate Republicans at the expense of the party’s blue-collar base, including union workers attracted to Trump’s promises to cut tariffs to both friends and enemies and the threats against Trump. American companies are considering moving jobs abroad.
Warnings about Trump’s threat to American democracy were important, they said, but the issue was not top of mind for most voters.
“In the coming months, our party will be doing a lot of introspection and a lot of thinking,” the Democratic Rep. said. Shri Thanedar, whose district includes much of Detroit. “The Democrats focused on Trump’s character. His legal problems because he’s a felon. But the people who are suffering economically, who feel like they are worse off economically, for the most part didn’t pay much attention to his character.
Others were less diplomatic.
Alexandra Rojas, executive director of the far-left Justice Democrats, said the party’s leadership “must take responsibility for how a second Donald Trump presidency became possible again under their watch.”
“The Democratic Party is rapidly losing its legitimacy among the ordinary people and marginalized communities who are continually used as a springboard to win elections,” Rojas accused, even as she acknowledged that “there are no easy answers for where we are going as a country and a movement.” . .”
Indeed, the data shows that Democrats have serious work to do.
Biden even pulled with Trump among voters without a college degree four years ago, earning 47% of their votes, compared to Trump’s 51%. But voters without a college degree swung toward Trump in 2024, giving him a clear advantage with 55% of their votes. Fewer – 43% – supported Harris.
The modest movement of people without college degrees was evident among younger voters, with Trump now earning 52% compared to 44% four years ago, and among non-white voters 32% versus 25%.
In total, about half of voters under the age of 30 supported Harris. That’s compared to the roughly 6 in 10 who supported Biden in 2020. At the same time, Black and Latino voters seemed slightly less likely to support Harris than four years ago, VoteCast found.
Jef Pollock, a veteran Democratic pollster, said the Harris campaign was “dealt a bad hand, given the international rebuke of incumbents around the world as voters’ frustrations with the economy have boiled over.”
“But Democrats need to look inward and ask what we can do to rebuild our relationship with rural, working-class and Latino voters, as well as with young men,” Pollock said. “It is clear that they believe that we are not meeting their daily needs.”
For now, it’s unclear whether the party will go through a formal self-investigation process to determine what exactly went wrong.
After the 2012 election, the Republican National Committee famously commissioned an internal report on “growth and opportunity” to chart a path forward. But even then, the Republican Party only achieved electoral success after Trump ignored the report’s recommendations to strengthen the party’s infrastructure and convey a more welcoming and inclusive message.
After the 2016 election, Democrats also made changes to their party infrastructure and fundraising, following a period of introspection.
Democratic strategist Faiz Shakir, who managed Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, is concerned that Democrats will not do the necessary introspection after this devastating loss.
“A healthy party challenges itself to conduct such an autopsy and hear what we did wrong,” he said. “I don’t even know that such a trial will happen.”
Sanders himself was more blunt in his statement.
“Will the big money interests and highly paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign?” he said. “Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any idea how we can take on the increasingly powerful oligarchy that has so much economic and political power? Probably not.”
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Cappelletti reported from Detroit. Associated Press writers Dan Merica, Farnoush Amiri and Stephen Groves in Washington contributed.
